Reseource sites are
the engineered features most strongly influenced by natural
conditions, namely by the amounts and availability of useful materials at given
places. Their exploitation is governed further by the cultural evaluation of
materials, by the technical means at hand, by the organization of the economy
using them, by the volume and rhythm of production in the society, and by the
employments made of the resource.
What is a resource
to one human group may be of no conceivable use to
another. The Navaho wandered for a long time over deposits of uranium without
finding a use for those ponderous rocks, and only when the warlike powers
discovered deadly uses for the mineral did the deposits become important
resources that have made the tribe rich.
